New Treasury sanctions target North Korean military, labor camps

The Treasury Department on Thursday targeted ten North Korean nationals and firms with ties to the country’s military and forced labor camps.

The department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which administers sanctions, targeted seven North Korean nationals and three firms through executive orders meant to curb the regime’s military and civil rights abuses.

The sanctioned officials, emissaries and companies are blocked from the U.S. financial system and can no longer access any U.S.-based assets they might have.

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“Today’s sanctions target the North Korean military and regime officials engaged in flagrant abuses of human rights,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said.

“We also are targeting North Korean financial facilitators who attempt to keep the regime afloat with foreign currency earned through forced labor operations.”

OFAC targeted North Korea’s Military Security Command, which the United Nations called the “military’s own secret police,” its director Jo Kyong-Chol and deputy director Sin Yong Il.

The office also targeted first vice minister of people’s security Ri Thae Chol; Ku Sung Sop, consul general in Shenyang, China; and Kim Min Chol, a diplomat at North Korea’s embassy in Vietnam. The latter two were involved with forcing North Korean refugees back to the country.

The department also blocked North Korean Minister of Labor Jong Yong Su, the External Construction Bureau and its director Kim Kang Jin and the Ch’olhyo’n Overseas Construction Company for operating forced labor camps.